We are on the brink of unimaginable technological change. The predictable acceleration of hardware, connectivity and sensors coupled with an unforeseen plethora of new business models and the need to tackle problems on a global scale leaves me optimistic about the coming decades.

It was with that in mind that I started developing Envisioning Technology– as a framework for speculating about currently emerging technologies that are bound to grow in the foreseeable future, and how they might do so. From Bio-enhanced Fuels to Telepresence. From an Interplanetary Internet to Artificial Retinas. All areas were of interest.

The exercise of researching these distinct technologies then led me to designing a framework in the form of a visualization. This incorporates key observations, such as inter-related areas of research in addition to pure speculation, such as when they might reach mainstream, or the impact they might have for consumers.

By extrapolating on current developments happening globally and then organizing these observations by area and in time, I started making sense of the bigger picture of our technological landscape.

Speculating about the future in public makes you question your assumptions on when and how the future will play out. It’s also an engaging method for talking to researchers, builders and developers in their respective fields.

Disagreeing with someone else’s guesswork is easy, while proving your own stance about things that have not happened yet is hard. My opinions about the when and the how are generally based on observing the volume of developments happening in a field and by looking at how important that area with its distinct technologies is likely to become socially. In a way, I am almost playing it safe in my predictions. Most technologies in the 5-15 year timescale have the backing of either existing corporations or government backing, meaning the vested interest in seeing their research come to fruition is large.

The value of any futurecasting happens by looking at intersections of seemingly different areas. When you start building timelines for individual technologies or fields of research, you start noticing their connections and dependencies. An almost tautological example of dependency is mobile communications: in order to develop a fifth-generation (5G) network, you first need a fourth-gen, a third-gen, etc. But in the case of having computers that recognizes objects and people (referred to as Machine Vision), the anterior availability of Depth Imaging (3D-cameras), Narrow Artificial Intelligence, Digital Photography, and a dozens of other preceding technologies becomes necessary. It is from these unlikely and spontaneous connections that the truly unforeseeable technologies spring.

The idea of publishing Envisioning Technology is exactly that of stimulating debate and discourse. I want to engage those who are already building the tools of the future to better understand where we are likely to be heading. I really believe in our capacity to transcend nature, to solve massive problems (not only the self-inflicted ones), and to truly better the lives of everyone on the planet – through technology.

Appreciating the time and effort you put into your website and in depth information you present.
It’s awesome to come across a blog every once in a while that isn’t the same
out of date rehashed information. Fantastic read! I’ve saved your site and I’m including your RSS feeds to my Google account.

True, In order for the Projects of any kinds to become reality Masses of Acceptance must be at the same time ….Meaning we are living in the planets makes of 7.2 billions +++ people in-order for thing to become widely acceptances enough of the 7 billions people…must believes or given a chances for those idea to become available …in the period of the Visionary which is less than a hundred of his age…etc …By the way I or you yourself are living of only less than 100 years old ..for thing to become reality we must find a group of same same believes in the same period of time time …

Ig … if we wanted our technologies to grown and become reality …we only can do and group people in less than 30 to 50 years and after ten to twenty years …we can lives to see our fruits that we had plants etc …Ig “Bill Gates , Mark… Mark Zuckerberg really is the new Bill Gates. ” LHK LLX

meaning look at the past dark-age or Religious ages it take closes to 600 years before we can moves on to the next ages and as we are able to sit down and comes to agree on commons goals and common interest …we can moves closer to the next stages in less time…Industry ages and spaces ages and technological ages and the the next stages is ” The stargazes ages ” which is ,is An Alien Technology ages …. THE Faster everyone will accepted there is an Aliens life forces out there the more we can uses Aliens Technology etc … LHK LLX

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[...] Michell Zappa has created an interactive table that maps out existing technologies and pairs them with emerging trends in an attempt to predict where and what we’ll be doing in the coming decades*. [...]

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